Robotech: The Liberators
by Left hand turn signal
Summary: AU, Instead of the Haydonites, the yeerks attack Space Station Liberty. The REF finds itself in another war all too soon, will their depleted fleet be able to turn the tide and save the galaxy?
1. Meeting

_AN: I hate to start this story without finishing the Spirit of Fire story, but here goes. I used to love the animorphs when I was younger, and I still enjoy reading the andalite and hork bajir chronicles. Unfortunately after reading these over again I had to write a crossover with another love of my childhood, Robotech: The New Generation._

_Setting_

_Robotech: The finale battle over reflex point AU, ignoring the haydonites and most of the events of shadow chronicles, I will probably use that movie for plot and character details though._

_Animorphs: Also AU, The events of the books never happened the andalites and yeerks continue to fight each other, during the events of three Robotech wars they have never noticed Earth or the other species (as they come from another galaxy)_

_There was only one thing that I don't remember and I'd appreciate an answer, did Elfangor remember Loren when he was returned to the andalite fleet._

_As far as technology goes I'm not even going to pretend to go into an in depth analysis, I'm going to assume the andalites have the edge in sensors, shields, firepower of individual weapons, and most other technologies, while the REF has the edge in stealth, fighter technology, destabilizers, synchro cannons, FTL, and general tactics like dogfighting and turreted weapons on a ship. (those were two things that always annoyed me when reading the descriptions of space combat in Animorphs)._

_I'm going to assume thinking caps exist and that protoculture is a really good energy source and has essentially "magic" properties when it comes to giant robots and Robotech weapons, and that reflex doesn't just mean nuclear._

_Thought speak will be italics in quotes and internal thoughts will be without quotes, its confusing but I hope it works out._

_Without further ado here is the story._

* * *

**In orbit over Earth, REF fleet**

Maia Sterling piloted her Shadow Legioss through the thick of the battle, Skull 2 and 3 hard pressed to keep up with their leader. She was the child of two of the first Robotech war's greatest aces, if there was anything genetic about piloting skill she had inherited it all. The Shadow Legioss was the combination of an alpha and a beta fighter in one fast well armed killing machine.

All that didn't change the fact that she was out of missiles. She Blew apart a pair of pincer enforcers with well aimed eye shots from her destabilizer gun pod. Then quickly changed to Guardian mode and departed the scene as yet another invid carrier deployed its mecha into the battle right on top of her squadron's position. She looked behind her as the tattered remains of the fleet fired yet another bombardment into the thick of the invid formations when she heard her radio crackle, "Prepare Neutron-S missile for launch T-minus 30 seconds and counting." _Damn_ she thought to herself.

"They can't be serious, we still have troops down there," one of the junior pilots from wolf squadron cut into the channel.

Maia didn't agree with using the Neutron-S missiles, but if humanity couldn't have earth, the invid sure as hell didn't deserve to keep humanities home world from them. She began to turn her fighter away from the battle, she didn't want to see Earth die, she had never set foot on earth, and she was only half human, but she felt connected to the world somehow.

That's when it happened. A huge glowing bird rose from the ugly sore that was reflex point, it was beautiful and terrible at the same time. It passed right through the Neutron-S missile and kept going leaving nothing in its wake, then it simply passed on into the depths of space.

"All units report back to moon base ALUCE for debriefing and repair," Came the orders over the radio.

Skull squadron formed up around their commander and rolled over heading towards the moon base. As they did so one of wolf squadron's pilots came over the radio, "What's that, looks like an incoming fold,"

"Its the SDF-3! Looks like admiral hunter finally made it to the party," Answered another pilot, "He's a bit late don't you think." One look at the wreckage all around them killed any humor in the situation.

An emergency transmission came over all channels, "Attention all units the Neutron missiles cannot be used against earth, there is a serious problem with the missiles, repeat do not fire Neutron missiles at earth."

"Rick, the invid have left, its over, the neutron missiles were destroyed in the process. All forces regroup at moon base ALUCE for debriefing." General Reinhardt informed the admiral.

"How bad is it general?" Admiral hunter asked the veteran commander of the SDF-4.

"We lost a lot in this fight we're down to only a few functional carrier groups, we could make up a few more with our surviving personnel in the damaged ships, but that's about it, it is going to take a long time for us to make up our losses in this battle, but earth is free." Reinhardt answered.

"If there is no Robotech fleet, then it becomes a question of how long earth will be free." Admiral hunter stood up from his captains chair and looked out the view port to his side.

A second face showed up on the view screen, "Admiral sir, we've just lost contact with space station liberty," The man on ALUCE base reported.

"Damn it, We just fight off the invid and now this?" Reinhardt exclaimed.

"We can't afford to loose Liberty, that station is vital to rebuild the fleet. I'm going to take the SDF-3 out and fold her back to earth." Rick decided aloud.

"That's crazy Rick and you know it, without the protoculture matrix our fleet is just as doomed," Reinhardt shook his head, "There has to be some other way."

"The SDF-3 is the only ship with enough protoculture to make the jump with Liberty in tow. It is the only way," The admiral looked back at the screen.

"At least take an escort along, they can make the jump on their own, and buy you time if the enemy is too much to handle," Reinhardt began to relent.

"The SDF-3's shadow system and most of our weapons are offline we'll need to anyway," Rick sighed, "The _Icarus_ and a carrier group should be enough to stop the enemy from destroying Liberty."

"Take the _Einstein,_ it is the least damaged carrier in the rest of the fleet, and Admiral?" Rick Hunter turned back to the screen, "Good luck."

* * *

Insis 9743 was a yeerk, visser 45 to be precise, he only had a hork bajir body unlike visser 3 and his so recently acquired andalite body. However, being a visser did have its advantages, such as command of a blade ship, and disadvantages. He had to work with visser 22 and his blade ship as a subordinate. Apparently the visser had found a massive space station floating in deep space, filled with suitable host bodies. He had immediately requisitioned a second blade ship and a pool ship to take the vessel and its thousands of new hosts. Visser 22 would probably get a promotion, visser 45 would probably forgotten in the glory.

The yeerk sulked in his host body's head torturing the poor thing to try and make himself feel better, it didn't help.

"Now dropping out of z-space," One of the other controllers, a taxxon announced. "Enemy space station has detected us, ships are launching."

The taxxon's speech was barely understandable even with a translator, visser 45 almost felt sorry for the poor controller trapped in an inferior body, almost. "Prime weapons open fire once we get in range."

"Ha, poor fools don't even have shields, hold on, visser 22 is making a transmission to the enemy fleet."

Insis looked at the monitor, the enemy had a ship nearly the size of a dome ship missing the dome and a few smaller ships arrayed around it. They didn't have shields though, it would be a cakewalk.

Visser 45's face came over the monitor, well his host's face did, a translator changed his words into the alien's language, deciphered from stray transmissions and writing on the ship's surface. "Surrender now and you will all live, don't and we will take you as slaves by force."

The alien looked surprised for a moment before his facial muscles tightened. "You can try you alien bastard, you'll find you just bit off a little more than you can chew, no one messes with earth. Ask the Zentraedi." With that the insolent alien cut the link.

Visser 45 laughed on the inside at the furious face of 22, he was careful not to show it, as the other visser would surely promise swift vengeance on his lesser.

The taxxon controller looked back at visser 22. "They just launched 300 fighters my lord."

The hork bajir visser sputtered when he heard that number, an andalite dome ship only carried half that many, their own ships carried enough to match the enemy fighters. "Launch bug fighters, if they resist us they will learn the price."

* * *

Unknown to both sides a small andalite scout ship was watching the battle, the _Seeker_ was assigned to follow yeerk activity, and two blade ships were more than enough of a worry to andalite high command that two dome ships had been assigned to stop the yeerks from taking the unknown space station. Tens of thousands of sentients were onboard the space station, it the yeerks managed to capture them that could turn the tide on several of the planets they were currently fighting for.

Prince Excull-Sirinal-Estrill longed to be out there fighting the yeerks head on, but he knew his posting was far more important. The two arisths looked like they wanted to be out there just as bad as he did, so outwardly he projected an aura of calm and reminded them to pay greater attention to their scanner screens.

He activated the Z-space transponder and contacted high command, "_Yeerks have engaged the station's defense fleet, they don't appear to have a chance, when will the dome ships arrive?_"

The aging war prince that responded to his calls looked annoyed at the question, "_two days, then we will remove this problem, turn on your battle recorders and begin transmitting back to us. Any new data on the yeerks will be extremely useful._"

Excull closed the connection and grimaced at the callous disregard of the thousands about to die. He turned on the data recorder but hoped that the aliens, humans they called themselves, would triumph, no matter how unlikely.

_"Prince Excull! Massive energy and gravitational buildup near the space station."_ One of the arisths exclaimed. _"Another ship just arrived..."_

_"Well, what about the other ship,"_ Excull demanded.

"_Forgive my hesitation my prince"_

_ "Out with it all ready quit prancing around the issue,"_ Excull stared at the young andalite with an expectant look on his face.

"_Its huge sir, many times the volume of a dome ship, it matches the design of the other human vessel, I'm detecting two other energy signatures but no additional ships" _The young andalite looked at the ground in contrition. "_The last of the original human ships has been destroyed, their fighters have retreated to the space station."_

Excull looked at his own screen, the massive human ship drew closer and closer to the space station attempting to dock with it apparently. The yeerk vessels surged forward to attack the newcomer. Now he had even more reason to wish the humans luck, if the yeerks go their hands on a new form of FTL capacity, it could be devastation to the andalites war.

"_Prince Excull, another energy build up, from near one of those FTL travel anomalies. Pool ship destroyed... One shot, that's impossible, blade ship destroyed, second blade ship has fled to z space."_

If Excull had a mouth, it would have been hanging open in astonishment. "_Impossible, even a dome ship doesn't possess that firepower, how could these humans have such technology."_

"_Another energy anomaly, it, it is visible from here," _The aristh quickly brought it up on the main viewing screen of the scout ship.

A huge sphere of dim yellow light could be seen in the distance surrounding the entire space station in a few moments the entire thing disappeared from view. "_We're picking up what appears to be a pair of human ships on visual."_

_"Why did we not see them before?_" Excull demanded.

"_They are only now in range, they must have some sort of highly effective stealth system, Wait, the bug fighters, they're just exploding, somethings taking them out, I have a communications link if you want to listen, from both sides,"_

_ "Yes, put it over the main system,"_ Excull ordered.

"No! Shields down in one hit, what are these things, they're too fast, its behind me!" The sounds of the hork bajir controller yelling ended suddenly as the bug fighter exploded.

"These alien fighters might have shields, but they sure are slow, if the squadrons aboard liberty had destabilizers they would have wiped the floor with these bug things"

"Romero, cut the chatter, the _Icarus_ might have destroyed their ships, but they'll be back and looking for earth, we only have nineteen synchro cannons, if they come at us all at once we'll be in for a fight."

"After the invid, these guys are easy!"

_"They find fighting yeerks easy?" _one of the arisths exclaimed.

The z-space transponder flashed, Excull answered it, "_Prince Excull we just saw what happened, I want you to initiate contact with these humans, we can't afford to let them leave, you need to open diplomatic relations until the dome ships arrive."_

_ "Of course war prince," _Excull answered the andalite. He turned an eye stalk towards one of the arisths, "_Open a channel to the human ship we can see."_

After a few minutes the humans responded, "Who the hell are you?"

"_I am prince Excull an andalite, and those things you are fighting are our enemy as well, they are known as yeerks and are bent on enslaving the galaxy,"_


	2. Sacrifice

Disclaimer: I don't own Robotech or animorphs

**Deep space, former site of Space Station Liberty**

"Yeerks? And I suppose you and your race are fighting them as well?" Vince asked the blue furred alien on the other side of the video connection.

"_Yes, so far we were the only race capable of defeating them militarily. We have been fighting to prevent them from gaining more hosts." _Excull rotated an eye stalk to look at one of the arisths and addressed him privately, "_Make sure this is recorded and sent to high command."_

_"Of course my prince_," the aristh replied in private thought speak.

"What exactly do you mean by hosts?" Vince said with a grimace on his face. The invid were bad enough, taking slaves to harvest the flower of life, killing all who resisted them. Taking hosts sounded like something out of a grade-B fiction movie from earth during the southern cross years, when movies about fictional monsters made the people forget about the real ones up in space.

"_The yeerks are blind slugs in their natural state, unable to leave their pools, unable to do almost anything. Which is why they take hosts, they crawl into the brain of their victims and control their bodies and memories." _Excull explained.

"How many races, how many people have they taken?" Vince asked, his grimace quickly turning to anger. The thought of what the alien was describing made his skin crawl.

"_Hundreds of thousands if not millions of sentient hosts, and hundreds of ships"_ Excull replied, the numbers were staggering to an andalite, whose military only numbered a hundred thousand on various dome ships and installations. The only thing there was to defend the millions of citizens on their homeworld. To his surprise, instead of fear the human made a strange sound and looked amused at the thought.

"We've fought worse odds and triumphed, multiple times," Vince thought of the battle above reflex point, a battle he had not been a part of, the truth was, they almost didn't survive, but they had been fighting millions of suicidally aggressive mecha over the main invid hive.

Excull didn't quite believe the human's boast, he believed even less their apparent willingness to help in what was the andalite's war. _"Why would you be so willing to get involved in our war?"_

"We have a saying on earth, I believe it was said long before the first Robotech war, 'The only thing it takes for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing,' I can't speak for admiral Hunter, but I'm sure he would agree with me. The yeerks aren't just going to ignore us. If we want earth to be safe once more we are going to have to fight. I don't suppose you have the authority to negotiate an alliance between our people?"

_"No, but there are two ships currently on the way here the war prince in command would have such an authority." _Excull answered truthfully.

"I'm going to contact my superiors, I'm sure they will be able to send a diplomatic team here. Until then I don't suppose you would be adverse to an exchange of information, so we can avoid any social faux pas when the diplomats do get down to business."

The translator didn't quite catch the last few words. _"Faux pas? What is that?"_

"And here I thought all aliens understood English perfectly," Vince smiled and chuckled to himself.

"_Actually we are using a translator, it didn't quite grasp the meaning of the words_," Excull looked perplexed, even more so when the human, actually burst out laughing. It was a crude but not entirely unpleasant sound.

Vince took a few moments to control his laughter, "We'll have to teach you a little about sarcasm. I should have paid more attention to rick's stories about their first contacts with the Zentraedi. As far as your question goes, it means an exchange of information about our cultures, so we don't accidentally insult each other and start a meaningless war over some practice one side finds normal, and the other side finds a deadly insult."

"_Ah, a sensible precaution I suppose,_" Excull answered him, "_We are just in a small scout ship it might be prudent if we were to land in one of your ships for a face to face meeting."_

"I hope you don't mind armed guards upon your arrival, precautions must be taken of course." Vince smiled a little, trying to let the alien see he was friendly.

_"Of course, in the same light you would not be surprised if we were armed as well."_ Excull made the andalite equivalent of the human smile.

Vince turned to one of the bridge crew, "Tell the _Einstein_ to deactivate her shadow device, and have skull leader and her flight escort their ship in.

**REF Carrier **_**Einstein,**_** Deep Space**

The first thing prince Excull noticed upon approaching the human ship was how different it looked from andalite and yeerk ships, it had huge protrusions with no discernible purpose, and it was actually thinner in the middle than the top and bottom, with an exposed tower rising above the rest of the ship. He didn't see any weapons, but that didn't necessarily mean anything.

The two fighters ahead of him were likewise very different from andalite fighters. A standard tail fighter had room for two andalites to stand and even turn around if necessary. These small fighters looked like they were mostly engines. When they had turned off their stealth systems the scanners got a good read of one human in a much to small compartment near the very front of the fighter. An andalite would never stand for being cooped up in such a small compartment with no grass for very long.

As the three ships came in for a landing the human fighters backed into what looked like service bays, while a human on the ground made motions pointing to a clear area somewhat larger than the scout ship. He set the ship down smoothly on the floor of the hangar then walked over to the hatch, ready to step out and meet a new species. This time it would be one he wasn't at war with, it was a refreshing change of pace.

As he stepped down the ramp he noticed the wide eyed stares from some of the crew as they hurried to repair and refuel the fighters. He also saw the welcoming committee. Three humans in some sort of colored covering for their bodies. To an andalite like Excull it looked ridiculous, but he knew that some other species had similar customs when visiting other planets, to protect them from heat or cold.

As he stepped off the ship, he noticed several large metal objects lining the open hatchway, on second glance he noticed that beneath the tinted visors he could see a pair of eyes looking back at him, they also had arms and were clutching what looked like oversized two handed shredders. His surprise and fear must have carried to his face and his now raised tail blade, because at that moment he heard a powerful voice shout, "Marines! Back three paces!"

The massive metal things stepped back roughly two full body lengths away. Another voice, one Excull recognized as belonging to the ship captain from earlier, called out, "Sorry to give you a scare like that, cyclones can be a bit scary up close the first time."

"_Cyclones? I did not realize you had multiple species aboard."_

"What? No... cyclones aren't a different species, they are a type of infantry mecha. It's a type of armor that wraps around an infantry soldier, giving them great strength and weaponry along with speed and maneuverability."

Excull didn't really see what the human was talking about, and apparently his look of confusion carried to his face because the human, Vince, or Grant, their names were confusing, gestured to one of the cyclones and the thing walked over. That was when something strange happened. It almost looked like the cyclone began to morph, except it was a quick swirl of motion instead of the slow but fluid change of an andalite morph. And suddenly there was a human in another version of their strange clothing holding what looked like the cyclone's head in one hand, apparently some sort of head covering to go with the body cover. It was standing next to a small wheeled vehicle, like a small version of something from andalite history.

"_Very strange, I wonder what would have inspired the need for that?"_ Excull pondered aloud.

"That would be our past enemies, the Zentraedi the Robotech masters, and all too recently the invid."

One of the other humans cut in, "Not two hours before we left for here, I was still over earth fighting against the invid." This one looked even stranger than the others to Excull, it was smaller and slimmer and had pink hair, he supposed it could have been an example of a female of this race. "This story may take a while, three entire wars encompasses a lot of time.

**Moon base ALUCE**

Admiral Hunter's return with Space Station Liberty in tow had brought some measure of hope to the battered Robotech fleet in orbit over earth. Heavily damaged hulks were being rebuilt, and damaged vessels were repaired at an astonishing rate. Liberty had been built within and around a Robotech factory satellite. Most of it's technology was still intact and greatly contributed to the speed at which it worked, but it would still be months before the REF was back to fighting trim. Which meant months of waiting for yet another hostile alien race to find them, months until they could truly protect earth.

At least this time they seemed to have allies. Admiral hunter wondered what had happened since Vince had sent a recording of their first conversation with the strange blue furred centaur alien. He had no time for that now, he and general Reinhardt were trying to determine the best way to safeguard earth.

"We need to buy time general, if we go on the offensive even with a few ships we could prevent them from getting to earth before our fleet is built up." Hunter wanted to go on the offensive, just as the REF tried to do during their mission.

"Admiral, there just aren't enough ships and crews to even defend earth, we simply can't all the ships even the SDF-4 are in need of serious repairs."

"What about the A_rk Angel_?" The ship he had asked about was a colony ship, put on hold until the REF could liberate earth. It had room for a synchro cannon, and with a little time in Liberty it would have a fully functional shadow device. In addition to that it had a pin point barrier system and enough onboard production capabilities to be completely self sufficient.

"A colony ship admiral? Sure it is as big as an SDF class vessel, but it requires a massive crew of pilots and support crew. I don't see it being a feasible ship to man and crew with what we have. For now we might be able to crew it with the displaced crews from ships about to be laid up in dry dock, but we definitely don't have enough fighter pilots." Reinhardt shook his head, "It just won't be combat capable, even if we build a synchro cannon for it."

"Then we recruit resistance fighters from earth, see if anyone wants to continue fighting and protecting earth, or just plain enlist in the Robotech forces. If nothing else we can fill the ark angel's quick reaction bays with shadow drones. So they can have a sucker punch. I saw the initial reports from the attack on space station liberty. These new aliens have some pretty fancy technology, but I can tell they don't really have any experiences with a real war, their fighters are more like under armed shuttle craft. Any of our fighters can maneuver in circles around them, the only reason Liberties defense fleet didn't manage to defeat their attackers was that they simply weren't armed with destabilizer cannons."

"But, Rick!"

"General, I appreciate your concerns, but in this case I have to be right, we must take the fight away from earth once more, only this time we won't leave our planet defenseless."

"Yes sir, admiral, I'll see to it that the _Ark Angel_ gets refitted as fast as possible."

**Dome Ship **_**Galaxy Tree,**_ Z-s**pace transit**

Elfangor stood in the center of the dome talking to war prince Nerefir, captain of the dome ship _Galaxy Tree_.

"_What do you think of them war prince?_" Nerefir asked him.

Elfangor paused to consider the question. The andalites had seen many of the human's broadcasts over the years, up until forty or so of their years ago they had continued to pay attention to the human homeworld's broadcasts. It was used as educational material about primitive cultures in andalite classrooms. Then they started building armed spacecraft, and suddenly ten years later all transmissions seemed to stop as they encountered some sort of threat from another species, intercepted transmissions continued for about a year later until one final broadcast was picked up, some sort of song. Everyone had assumed it was the human's own way of saying goodbye to the universe, but now they had reappeared, mysteriously and with nothing to indicate where they had been for forty revolutions around their sun.

"_I don't know, I'd have to meet them to know anything about them for sure. We don't even know if those broadcasts were accurate. No matter what though we need that technology if we want to win this war. The yeerks are gaining ground, their ships are starting to outnumber us, pretty soon our technological edge won't matter much._" Elfangor stated simply. "_We might need the human's help in fighting our enemy._"

"_Yes, that is exactly what I'm afraid of_." Nerefir walked to the edge of the dome and stared into the emptiness of Z-space. Elfangor followed him, wondering what was on the captain's mind. "_What if they follow the path the yeerks have taken, and try to conquer and enslave the galaxy, will we be able to stop them?"_

"_Hopefully we won't have to, we'll just have to be careful. We deal with the yeerks, but we keep an eye stalk watching the humans." _Elfangor answered. Without saying it he hoped that would be enough.

"_War Prince Nerefir, we will drop out of z-space in five minutes."_ came a voice over the ship wide thought speak channel.

"_Elfangor, accompany me to the war bridge, I want you to give me your first impression of the humans."_

They trotted over to the drop shafts and took the down shaft to the war bridge. In another thirty seconds the ship made the transition to real space followed closely by her sister ship, the _Promise_.

They were greeted by no less than four yeerk blade ships and two pool ships, a massive force for the yeerks. One human vessel fired furiously at the approaching yeerk vessels. Wreckage surrounded it, a second smaller vessel was trying to flee the scene of the battle, its nose section a mangled ruin Impressive considering a full power dracon cannon from a blade ship could destroy a dome ship in one shot if it got past the shields. Hundreds of the small nimble human fighters dueled with their yeerk counterparts. The human vessel was as big as a dome ship, but it maneuvered like a blade ship, avoiding the fixed weapons of its enemies, the yeerks had more trouble hitting it than they should have but the andalites could see it was only a matter of time.

Unfortunately for them, the yeerks detected the entry of the two dome ships. And five of their six craft changed direction to intercept. The other dome ship, the _Promise_ fired the few shredders they had available with the dome attached even as they detached the huge mobile park. They took down the shields on the trailing pool ship, but the error would cost them, all three of the blade ships not occupied with the human vessel fired upon the dome ship. It exploded in a huge flash of light, all of the warriors and fighters aboard gone in an eye blink.

"_NO!"_ screamed Elfangor.

Blue beams of energy lanced out at the stricken pool ship, they hit the giant spiderlike mother ship with a vengeance explosions wracked the ship, and left it drifting and disabled, the main pool breached and leaking frozen yeerks and pool sludge into the vacuum of space. The humans had made the _Promise_'s sacrifice count.

"_Get to your fighter now Elfangor!"_ ordered captain Nerefir.

He dashed down the hallway into the drop shaft catching a ride to his fighter, his brother, Aximili's fighter had already left the bay. He quickly powered up the fighter and flew it out of the bay. He looked over the battle as he maneuvered away from the dome ship.

Despite the initial surprise, the dome ships had come out in a near perfect position relative to the yeerk fleet. Two salvos and two of the blade ships were shot down. It seemed too late however, as the second pair lined up on the blade ships and prepared to fire.

Elfangor saw a blur of motion on his screen. The human ship was accelerating at insane speeds, small capsules, probably escape pods were streaming from the craft as it moved in at high speed towards the battle. It superimposed itself in front of the dome ship, one short communication was sent out before the dracon beams on the blade ship destroyed the human vessel.

"Make it count."


	3. Planning

**Deep Space, former site of Space Station Liberty**

Maia Sterling felt her legioss shudder as it took a hit from one of the enemy laser weapons. She felt the controls go sluggish as the docked beta lost power. Maia hit a lever to one side of the cockpit. The forward alpha section of her fighter rocketed off from the larger beta. She looked around for her wing man and saw the debris from his legioss, slowly drifting in the direction he had been flying.

She quickly transformed into battloid mode and flipped around, firing her destabilizer and the last of her missile at the attacker. The bug fighter thankfully had continued to fire at the larger beta section. It realized its mistake too late as four missile streaked in past its shields and blew the fighter apart.

She flew out of the thick of the battle, looking for easy prey among the bug fighters. The andalite fighters were only just beginning to engage. They used the same tactics their counterparts did, concentrating on kills not survival, they didn't fly as wing pairs, and they rarely used the dogfighting tactics their human counterparts were used to. Maia spotted a pair of the bug-like fighters lining up on one of the new arrivals. She dove relative to the dogfight, burning down one of the alien fighters as she did so.

Maia shot again at the second fighter, destroying it and leaving the alien's six clear. She pulled in front of the strange, almost scorpion-like, fighter and waggled her wings before flying off in search of more targets.

**Yeerk Blade ship, former site of Space Station Liberty**

Visser Forty five was scared, immediately because of the dome ship that had just now blown apart a third blade ship after the human vessel had saved it from his guns, and otherwise, because even if he managed to retreat he would still probably be executed for incompetence for losing no less than four blade ships and three pool ships to a newly discovered race, with the upcoming invasion of Leera on the horizon.

"Kill that dome ship, NOW!" he yelled at the bridge crew. It was a mostly worthless order, they were already fearing for their lives at the hands of the dome ship, his added threat didn't do much else to spur them on.

Then again, as he watched the dome ship finally break apart, maybe it did. The yeerk felt a small flicker of something the andalites would have called hope.

That feeling was tempered somewhat as the surviving pool ship reported local shield failures as the human fighters swarmed it en masse. Then it disappeared altogether as the sensor operator reported no less than nine of the strange energy disturbances that preluded the human ships' arrival.

"Visser, the humans are sending us a message," one of the taxxon controllers stationed on his bridge reported.

"So they love to gloat do they? Put it on screen, I want to see their faces as we make the transition to Z-space." The Visser was experiencing a sort of fatalism, knowing he was doomed.

"This is the _Sucker Punch_, we have no less than three synchro cannons trained on each of your remaining vessels. Power down your vessels or we will destroy them both."

Visser Forty five's hork bajir mouth hung open in surprise.

"Visser, what do we do?" the taxxon asked.

"I'm not in any mood to die for the empire today, stand down, tell them we surrender." The visser slumped, defeated.

"Wait, the pool ship is not standing down, they're turning to engage the newcomers."

"The fools, what do they expect to accomplish, they can't get into z-space before they are wiped out." The yeerk looked at the monitor, as the pool ship turned towards the enemy. Several dozen beams of light spewed forth to strike the ship, but they were all well aimed, blowing apart the pool ships weapon emplacements and engines leaving it dead in the water.

He looked at a different monitor, the rest of the bug fighters were being destroyed one by one, the andalite and human fighters making short work of them. He sighed in defeat as several human vessels, probably boarding craft made to dock with both his ship and the pool ship. He didn't even resist as a group of humans, apparently huge metal monsters with a featureless face stomped onto his bridge. One of his Sub Vissers attempted to fight back. The unfortunate yeerk found his blades didn't even scratch the armored creature he was trying to fight. The same could not be said of the human's blade, which neatly severed the hork bajir's head from its shoulders.

And so, Visser Forty five simply set his dracon weapon on the ground at his feet, and let the humans take him.

**Deep Space, former site of Space Station Liberty**

"_You want us to what?"_ Elfangor questioned the human. The human was dressed predominately in pink, it seemed to be some sort of rank indicator, but he didn't understand the significance, it also wore what he understood to be an equivalent of an andalite emergency air hood.

"Look, I don't know what the capabilities of your FTL drives are, but those yeerks will probably be back here pretty soon, and if you don't clear out now you will just be sitting ducks." The human pilot patiently explained to him.

"_Our fighters won't be able to make it to the nearest outpost, and it would take another dome ship months to get here, never mind transporting the two dome sections anywhere with the arisths aboard."_ Elfangor explained, somewhat downcast after the high of defeating a powerful yeerk fleet.

"How far away is your fleet? Entire galaxies?" The human exclaimed, incredulous.

"_No, merely several dozen light years away_" Elfangor answered intentionally vague, to disguise the andalite homeworld's true location.

At that time another human cut into the communication, this one much heavier set and not wearing the human space suit. "I think we have a solution. I have been authorized by my superiors to offer you our hospitality. A ride to earth, our homeworld."

"_But how? Your ship couldn't possibly carry both dome sections, it is much too small."_ Elfangor asked the human. It was true, the largest human ship after the battle was damaged, and could barely carry a few dozen fighters, the dome was large enough to house hundreds of andalites, and limited even a mighty dome ship's maneuvering and acceleration.

"I don't think you've seen our fold systems in action war prince. They can switch two entire spheres of space, the longer distance the longer time and more energy required, but Earth is a mere few minutes away from here. We would be happy to transport you along with us, any alien that helps us against a common foe is a friend of ours." The human turned to the side as if receiving a report, then he turned back to the screen. It was weird for Elfangor to see a species that only had main eyes. It was somewhat unsettling. He knew intellectually this species was very advanced by the technology they had shown, but he couldn't help but feel slightly sorry for them. He was a bit lost in thought and started when the human spoke again. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but your prince Excull died aboard the _Einstein_ when she died."

"_That is unfortunate, but he died in battle against the yeerks, his memory will be honored,"_ Elfangor bowed his head and lowered his eye stalks in mourning, not just for Excull, but for Nerefir and all the other brave andalites that died that day.

The human nodded his head in acknowledgement, and though Elfangor was no expert in xeno-biology, he could swear he saw a similar sadness and anger in the human's eyes.

"We don't know when the yeerks will be back, but we should probably leave this space as soon as possible, we need to get those captured ships to Space Station Liberty. I'm going to need you to group your fighters around your domes, the least area taken will be best."

Elfangor issued the orders among the remaining andalites, and instructed the arisths to keep the domes steady so the fighters could form up around the massive space going park. That was when the Icarus, the human ship pulled up into the center, in an amazing display of grace for such a large vessel. Its prow was heavily damaged by a yeerk dracon beam, but the massive gaping barrel of its main gun was still a visible reminder of what the humans were capable of.

Even more amazing was the sphere of yellow energy that surrounded the group of andalite fighters, he could barely make out similar spheres surrounding the damaged yeerk ships and other human vessels.

Then it started, his vision seemed to double, his digestive tract began to feel strange, like he was sick. He became dizzy and almost fell over, cries of distress came from the other andalite ships. But in a few minutes it was completely over, everything seemed the same, the debris around them was the same the ships were in the same formation, except one thing, now hanging in front of them was a blue white planet, orbited by a fairly uninteresting rock. More interesting however, was the massive space station sitting in the space between the two.

"_Amazing"_ Elfangor said aloud, The andalites had more extensive defense installations than what he could see, but nothing on the scale of the massive space station. He saw dozens of telltale thruster trails of ships travelling though the system, the majority of them came from the barren satellite. It may have had some sort of weapons installation on the other side he could not see.

Elfangor turned his attention to the planet below. It was mostly blue and white, and quite beautiful. He sat in his cramped fighter staring at the planet for some time until another ship approached, it passed them by and entered the massive space station. It was massive, three times as long as a dome ship, several times as wide and tall. It had a much thinner front section followed by a much wider section, and the glow of several massive engines. The communications panel in his fighter beeped for attention.

The human commander of the _Icarus_ appeared in the display. "War prince, we need to know more of what we are fighting, I and my leaders would like to meet face to face with you and your top officers."

"_Yes, I have received orders from my homeworld, the andalites here under my command are to be assigned as 'military advisers' to your species. Our fleet is stretched thin keeping the yeerks back, so we are assigned to help you."_ Elfangor said. He knew they were assigned to help the humans as a ploy, high command was hoping the yeerks would be worried enough at the loss of many vessels to another race they would slip up elsewhere. They had seen the space battle against the yeerks, and he knew high command did not think much of the human's chances. Elfangor and his new command was essentially being sacrificed like Alloran's small command on the Hork Bajir homeworld. Or like countless other small commands cut off from reinforcements tasked with delaying the yeerk advance.

"Ah, I suppose they aren't sending reinforcements then? Too worried about other concerns I guess. Look on the bright side, we have a shipyard, and a planet the yeerks don't know about. We can take the fight to them."

Elfangor shook his head at the human's optimism. "_The yeerks have hundreds of ships, and they are building more and more pool ships and blade ships. By ourselves we won't be able to destroy them."_

"We'll have to strike an retreat, harry their flanks, make lightning raids against their most heavily defended worlds. Then they will have to spend more effort on defense, leaving less for them to attack other worlds with."

Elfangor frowned, morph capable spies regularly attempted to infiltrate enemy worlds, but they tried to stay away from combat. When andalites attacked they strove to win, and hold the planet, they didn't attack at random. "_That seems strange, though effective, a resistance war in space."_

"Yes, we call it a guerrilla war. Strike to harm then blend back into the background. Admiral Hunter wants me to lead this effort, I will be given command of the _Ark Angel_, the big ship you see out there, she is a retrofitted colony ship, with a large mecha and marine complement, She doesn't have the best weapons, but we'll be mounting the weapons from those captured ships on her. If you want, I would be honored to give you and your warriors a tour, she has plenty of room, especially in the colony bay."

"_Yes, I would like that."_ Elfangor appreciated the offer, the only other chance to stretch his legs would come if he wanted to board one of the domes, or if the humans allowed him to land on their world.

"You can bring the rest of your soldiers aboard, there are docking clamps to either side, meant for our own Ikazuchi class cruisers, I think your domes will be able to dock, once they dock, I think we can replenish any air, or the like once they dock. There's also plenty of room in the mecha bays, we still don't have a full load of fighters."

**Onboard remains of the dome ship _Galaxy Tree, _Earth space**

Calypso-Sirinal-Faral was an andalite aristh, _she_ was no ordinary aristh, she had fought her way into the academy and into a posting aboard a dome ship, instead of a nowhere posting on some security station, as was normal for females in the military. Sure, the military needed every able body, but plenty of chauvinism still existed. She along with the only other aristh on the _Galaxy Tree_, a male by the name of Nactif-Semirote-Isthill. She and Nactif had been at the academy together.

Unlike most males he did not see males as the better fighters, mostly because he had seen Calypso beat many of the best tail fighters at the academy simply through speed and cunning over the strength a male had. He was perhaps the only friend Calypso had in the andalite military.

She was still shocked at the way two dome ships had been destroyed in the battle, they had been surprised and outnumbered and outgunned. It was thanks to the humans that they had won the battle. She found herself thinking they should have arrived sooner, and saved the andalite ships, but stopped herself, one of the large human vessels had plunged in front of the _Galaxy Tree_ to save it from a pair of yeerk blade ships, sacrificing itself to give the andalites a chance.

Calypso was shaken from her reverie when an andalite fighter came along the hatch to dock with the dome. She and Nactif trotted over to greet the warrior, who was probably here to brief them on the situation. They had arrived in the orbit of a strange planet with only one desolate moon. She had no idea where they were, or even what the humans looked like, now maybe she would get some answers.

The warrior exited the airlock and trotted over to the limited controls for the dome ship's thrusters. He ordered the computers to move to dock the the human ship.

"_What is going on here sir?"_ She asked the warrior.

He looked at the two arisths with impatience, "_I have been ordered by war prince Elfangor to dock the dome with the human ship, now stay out of the way."_

Calypso bristled at the manner she was ignored, but held her thoughts. An aristh didn't respond to insults from a warrior. Instead she accessed one of the other computer accesses and brought up an image from the underside of the dome, where the docking systems were placed. She and Nactif watched as the human ship appeared to grow in the screen. It was huge, many times larger than a dome ship. As they approached she saw were they were going to dock, somewhat behind a central tower where a pair of massive rings, She saw them stretch and expand to match themselves to all the way around the docking systems of the dome ship.

She had to admit, despite being raised to believe in the superiority of andalite technology, this was a simple and elegant solution to the problem of different docking systems. Andalites had solved the problem using force fields to keep atmosphere inside, and docking systems that didn't quite match up to their counterparts. That took a lot of a ship's spare power, and was actually still more prone to failure than a simple physical system.

Soon though they couldn't see anything from their camera as the docking collar met with the underside of the dome.

"_Come on arisths, the war prince is already onboard and waiting for us._" the warrior turned to the airlock, and Calypso and Nactif followed.

After the airlock cycled, a small platform amid the cavernous space rose up to meet them. The war hero himself, Elfangor rode on the platform beside his brother and a few humans, a large broad one with dark skin on the head, a smaller lither one, with pale skin and shockingly pink hair, and a much older looking one with the same pale skin as the second, but white hair on its head, however it had the same build as the dark skinned one. The first and third has some strange loose skin almost pure white in color with small splotches of color. The second smaller one had a much tighter second colored skin, this was a dark grey in color. Calypso almost instinctively assumed this was a female. She couldn't prove it without further evidence, but somehow she just knew.

"_You're going to have to jump down,"_ The andalite prince told them in private thought speak. "_This human platform doesn't have gravity adjusters._"

The three andalites in the dome jumped down to the human platform, and it was lowered by some unseen force. Calypso backed up startled when she saw what it was. It appeared to be a huge human made of metal, more angular, and with only a single red eye staring back at her.

"I see you like our battloids, don't worry, your prince was startled as well. They're actually our fighters, there's just another pilot up there in that thing." The pink haired female explained.

"_That is... strange." _Calypso murmured.

"Just wait until you see some of our customs. Your prince nearly shat bricks when I took my helmet off." The alien said.

"Commander, please be respectful to our guests" The large dark headed male said.

"Sorry captain, I'm not trained for diplomacy." The female answered back. She looked back at Calypso, "I'm Maia Sterling, commander of skull squadron, best fighter squadron in the REF."

Calypso was somewhat put off, normally warriors ignored lowly arisths, cadets only just assigned to their first mission, inexperienced, and yet this apparently skilled alien pilot was treating her as an equal.

"_Don't worry, the humans do things a little differently than we do aristh"_ Elfangor cut in.

Calypso looked behind her and noticed the warrior looked a little uneasy, apparently feeling snubbed by the human.

Elfangor spoke up again, "_Warrior, you will accompany me while I discuss our strategy with the admiral. Arisths, you are to find out as much as you can about these humans, so we know what we are __going to be dealing with, the commander here has from what I've been told, volunteered to be your guide on this ship._"

"_Yes sir!"_ Nactif almost shouted. Calypso answered in a somewhat more muted fashion. She was displeased with the assignment, it wasn't something a warrior would be doing. The group separated and she followed Nactif and the human Maia. Nactif was busy asking questions about the ship, which Maia answered in a guarded fashion with the species' funny mouth sounds. She followed, feeling angry at the typical way she was assigned to do nothing important and didn't listen to a word that was said.

_**Ark Angel**_** colony bay, earth orbit**

Alex Romero was walking along a road in the middle of the massive colony bay, up above floated the illusion of a bright day in summer, complete with fluffy white clouds. He was joined by his wing man Marcus Rush. A somewhat downcast pilot, he'd been that way since they had received word of the mars division's failed assault. Apparently his sister had died in that doomed attack.

They were walking along the mostly uninhabited colony, looking for a restaurant or bar to replace the one they had frequented on moon base ALUCE. They had also transferred to skull squadron, which was commanded by the girl Marcus seemed to have the hots for. That didn't lighten his mood though, the battle over reflex point had darkened him if possible.

As they were walking Marcus stopped suddenly in his tracks and stared over at the park. Where apparently a pair of blue centaurs were walking on the grass, watched by their squadron commander. They walked over to see what was going on.

"Commander?" Alex asked tentatively.

Maia turned and looked over in their direction, then waved them over.

Alex had been on the Robotech expedition, and he had seen each of the sentinel races at least once. Spherians, garudans, haydonites, karbarrans praxians, perytonians. Even the invid and the human-like tirolians. The only one of those weirder than these new aliens were the haydonites, limbless cyborgs, and possibly the least understood of the sentinel races.

He and Marcus walked over to the commander, the two aliens were standing on the grass. The smaller one turned to them, or rather its horns turned to him, and he saw a pair of eyes on them. That was weird.

"Uh... hey" Alex said slowly.

"_Hello human, I am aristh Calypso, and you are?"_

_ "_Weird, that was in my head. Like telepathy or something. Oh, right, I'm Alex Romero, always nice to meet new people, isn't that right Marcus?" He turned around slightly to see Marcus still stuck in his gloomy funk.

"Yeah, I guess." Was all he said in reply.

"Commander, I think Marcus needs a drink, he's been like this for days now, I don't suppose you know where the bar is? Hey maybe the aliens here want a drink too." He looked at the aliens and gave a warm smile, which only got looks of confusion from them.

"_Why would you find a place to drink when there is perfectly good creek here?"_ The bigger one practically blurted out, and earned a look from his smaller companion.

"Uh... from a creek?" Alex was puzzled, he scratched the back of his head. "I meant from a bar, you know beer and what not."

"_Beer? What is that? Some sort of nutrient liquid?" _The big alien asked.

"Uh, no he means alcohol." Maia clarified.

"_Alcohol, but that is a caustic substance, why would you drink such a thing?_" The alien kept up the questions.

Alex didn't know what to make of aliens who had never been drunk before. "Uh, well, yeah, but, it's... uh... well it's kind of complicated."

Maia rolled her eyes. "I don't know where a bar is, but I do know where the officer's club is. I guess it couldn't hurt to go there, I'm feeling pretty hungry myself, and besides, these two were assigned to learn about human culture, I suppose it couldn't hurt too bad."

Alex grinned, "Famous last words commander, right up there with 'Hey y'all! Watch this!'" Despite the words, he simply fell in step behind the commander and followed her and the aliens to the officer's club.

As they arrived, they noticed a group of people in civilian clothing, obviously volunteers from resistance groups on earth. That's when Marcus noticed a specific blue haired man drinking in a group of several other people, a large heavyset man and a long haired effeminate man both in REF uniform, along with three attractive women in civilian clothing, a scrawny looking well tanned man and oddly enough a small child.

Alex noticed that Marcus obviously knew this man, especially when he practically ran over the waiter to get to the table.

"Scott? Scott Bernard? I can't believe it's you! What happened to my sister?"

The man seemed shocked as Marcus mentioned his sister, he turned to the fighter pilot and shook his head slowly, "I'm sorry Marcus, she didn't make it. Its good to see you again, she would have been proud of you Marcus."

Marcus seemed to physically deflate, he lost all the exuberance he had when he first saw Scott. "Yeah, okay I guess, I hope you made the invid pay for what they did."

Alex noticed the expressions of the group, especially two of the women seemed to tighten at that last statement. He decided to let it go.

Alex and his group sat down at an empty table, and as soon as they sat down, the ship wide intercom made an announcement, "All pilots and marines report to briefing rooms for pre-mission briefing."

He groaned, "Never fails, as soon as it's time to sit down and unwind, duty calls."

**Briefing room, aboard the _Ark Angel_**

Elfangor stood near the assembled officers of the _Ark Angel_. As soon as the humans had heard of the yeerk invasion of Leera, they had assumed they would fight to free them. He tried to convince them the andalites would take care of the problem, and they had essentially laughed at him. The human notion of protecting their, and everyone else's freedom was a little overwhelming. The andalites believed in correcting their mistakes with the yeerks, nothing more. If anything the human ideals seemed a little dangerous.

The human named Vince stepped up to an object called a podium and began speaking to the assembled human and andalite warriors. "Just a few hours ago, we received word of another planet, home to a species known as the leerans was attacked by the yeerks. As we proved on the sentinel worlds, we do not leave species to their fate, especially when they are attacked by our enemies. We are going to travel to leera, and we are going to free them."

"The _Ark Angel_ is the only ship we can spare, Liberty and the karbarrans are making replacement ships as fast as possible, and recruitment is up among the colonies. Until our fleet is rebuilt, we are the only human ship out there fighting for freedom. We may not make it back to earth, but as long as we fight, freedom is attainable, as soon as we give up, we have already lost."

Elfangor couldn't help but be a little moved by the speech, these humans seemed to fight to the bitter end. If it was possible for an andalite to admit such a thing, he felt respect for these creatures, perhaps even equaling the respect he felt for his fellow warriors. He listened as the human continued.

"We aren't alone in this fight, as we left to free our homeworld, the sentinels were busy. Even now, our allies' fleet travels to aid us in our fight. We are joined in this fight by the andalites, who have fought the yeerks for years now."

"Now, even we are joined by former enemies. You know the story of the Zentraedi and the Robotech masters, once they were our mortal enemies. The Zentraedi alone killed billions in the rain of death, when their fleet surrounded the earth. And yet, after the war when their fleet lay in ruins in orbit, and their survivors had no where to go, we welcomed them with welcome arms into our society, and they became our greatest allies. Forgiveness came with time, and they learned the joys of leaving war behind."

"As you know, the invid found a way to mimic human form in their long occupation of earth. Unfortunately they ran into the same problems the Zentraedi did, we now have two invid defectors as part of our crew. They have been pardoned by Admiral Hunter, I expect you to treat them with the same respect you would your fellow soldiers. The invid war is over, just as the Zentraedi war is over. Your respective commanders will have your orders, group dismissed!"

Elfangor hadn't been very surprised to find out they had been attacked before. However, the fact that they had run into a alien race that was completely genetically compatible, and had apparently evolved separately from each other was almost unbelievable, but he had seen the records, it was still possible they were a forgery, but Elfangor didn't think so. These humans had an amazing capacity to forgive their enemies and make peace with other races. However, now he had to keep his warriors alive in the coming battle, and a large portion of them were pilots without fighters, He knew the andalites would be outnumbered on the ground. However they had no shuttles or assault ships to deliver them into the fight. He would have to ask the human captain to allow his warriors to ride along in their assault shuttles.

"_Vince?_" He asked.

"What is it Elfangor?" The human asked.

"_I have several warriors here that are not assigned to fighters they would feel useless if they could not join the fight in some way. However they don't have transportation to the surface."_

"Hmm... Our cyclone infantry units are used to a more rapid assault than I think your warriors are capable of. I'll tell you what, I can assign your spare warriors to our combat engineer division. They travel with heavy equipment, and aren't as mobile, you should be able to keep up."

"_Thank you human_"

"We will depart for leera in less than 3 hours, I suggest you inform your warriors."

"_Of course_"


	4. Assault

**Surface of planet Leera**

Silas Wulfe was a member of the Charon division. A special forces group established just as the invasion fleet left, they used specially rigged mecha for ground based attacks against the invid. Specifically, Shadow cyclones equipped with the CADS-2 system, visual, thermal, and protoculture stealth technologies.

The best thing about their cyclones is they were designed to interface with a modified Veritech hover tank, the famed VHT-1 Spartas from the second Robotech war. These hover tanks used the very latest in Robotech stealth systems to mask both their protoculture emissions, and the while of their anti-grav engines. Instead of a normal energy gun pod, the carried destabilizers They were quiet, fast and stealthy, perfect weapons to fight the invid, in large or small numbers.

Against the yeerks, it was overkill.

Up ahead his squadron leader, Captain Xed Murdock, called for the four hover tanks to stop. He gestured to a group of yeerk assault ships up above and ordered the squadron to camouflage their tanks. Each soldier brought their tank to a small outcropping and pulled out visual camo nets, hopefully disguising the advanced Veritechs from yeerk eyes.

The captain turned to his squad. "Silas, you're with me. Bradley, Jones, stick with the tanks, maintain radio silence until you receive new orders, remember those tanks and cyclones cannot fall into the hands of the enemy."

Silas dismounted from his hovertank, and checked his weapons. The CADS-2 systems on each forearm plate were in place, each one held a retractable vibroblade and a pair of mini-missiles. He also carried a H-90 Gallant, it was the rifle model commonly issued to soldiers, but the modular barrel was removed to aid in close quarters combat situations, such as inside an invid hive. The last weapon Silas carried was a specially made sniper rifle, the M-137, or more affectionately, the weezer. It had an integrated suppressor. Of course it still used bullet technology, but the round was specially designed to pierce an invid sensor eye at ranges less than five hundred meters, so it still had plenty of power.

Murdock checked his gear to make sure it was all secure, and he did the same for the captain. They moved along the leeran landscape as they had been trained, making use of their cyclone's chameleon like abilities to stay undetected. Only once had they been forced to engage when a damned psychic leeran controller spotted them. The yeerk patrol didn't last three seconds past that point.

Silas risked a short range infrared laser communication to Murdock. "What's the objective captain?"

"Observe, report, engage targets of opportunity with low risk." Came the answer.

They lay down a rocky ridge overlooking a large yeerk emplacement. Trenches had been dug out in front of them in row after row, and heavy support dracon cannons sat ready to shoot upon the narrow approach into the valley. The anti-air fire was strong enough to stop any air assault.

"Looks like they're clearing room for a ship to land, pretty big one too, odds are they're reinforcements." Silas commed to the captain.

"I'll call it in." He answered.

Silas continued to survey the area with the scope on his M-137. In less than five minutes he had spotted at least five yeerks who were ranked high enough to sit off to the side while their equivalent of NCOs ordered the bulk of the troops around, he marked the locations of those as well and sent it to the combat computer on Murdock's cyclone. Five minutes after that, the ship they were waiting for started to descend.

"Sonofabitch, Silas, that's the andalite assault ship that their commanders lost contact with. Looks like we're going to need to speed up our plans. The 2nd battalion assault will have to wait, we need to keep that ship from entering yeerk hands."

Silas grinned and replied, "Well, we don't have destroid support, so I guess that means we'll have to do it the old fashioned way."

**Andalite assault ship _Ascalin_, planet Leera**

Captain Samilin, stood on the bridge, shredder held on his former T. O., a particularly arrogant andalite named Hareli. The rest of his bridge crew lay unconscious all around the bridge, laying where he had stunned them. He had left Hareli conscious, but only barely, so he wouldn't be able to strike out with his tail.

Samilin had essentially turned over Leera to the yeerks, and at the very least, almost a dozen andalite bodies to use as hosts. From what the filthy slug called Visser four had told him, he would be given a ship and any item he could ask for, including his freedom. Of course he knew not to trust a yeerk, so he would have to be careful.

That is why he turned a stalk eye to one of the holographic displays showing the landing site below the ship.

He turned the stalk eye away and towards the stunned andalites, making sure none of them were awake. The ship set down with a jarring thud, designed, when Samilin made the landing routines, to cripple the ship as it touched down. "_Computer, open hatch 21_"

_"The yeerks will take leera now, thanks to me." _Samilin watched his T.O. carefully. Hareli wasn't giving into despair, or glaring at him. Instead he seemed to be smiling of all things.

His eye stalk swiveled to the emergency hatch, it was opened. An alien, seemingly made entirely out of metal walked into the battle bridge. It walked with an over large weapon in its hands. He assumed it was some sort of new controller species and kept the shredder focused on Hareli.

He saw through one of his stalk eyes, a massive blade shot out from the thing's arm. Then it leapt at him. He couldn't get his shredder around in time and raised his tail to block. The blade passed straight through, and half of his tail blade clattered to the ground. His shock prevented him from striking out again, that proved to be fatal.

Hands reached out and ripped the shredder from his hand, throwing it to the side. Then something hit him hard, he felt bones cracking at the impact point and went flying into a bulkhead. He felt even more bones break as he slipped into unconsciousness.

**Surface, planet Leera**

Sera, former princess of the invid, landed her battloid, as the humans called it, on the surface of Leera. She was with her former enemies, a human resistance group, escorting a group of combat engineers to the surface. The human way of waging war was very different from the invid, and in many ways less instinctual and more intellectual. She understood that much better as a human form invid. Before she had been 'evolved' by the Regis, she only understood building and defending the hive, perhaps a few other thoughts and ideas related to those two primary concerns.

Sera wondered if the regis had known the level of independence her children would display once they had been evolved into human form.

She piloted her battloid, Lancer and Scott piloted beta fighters, in her days as a lower stage invid those fighters would have caused her plenty of fear, they were among the most powerful of the human's mecha.

The humans known as Rook and Rand piloted alpha fighters. The others, Lunk, Annie, and her fellow invid Ariel all were still aboard the human ship in orbit.

She looked around the landing site. Several large floating platforms used by the andalites as gunships floated near the clearing. The sensor on the top of her mecha spotted several of the strange four legged aliens waiting outside the large mostly clear landing site. They stood amongst several types of scrub bush and rock formations that dominated the continent. The new human side of her idly wondered if the sea, visible from here, contained any edible fish. Having a human body had its benefits, she no longer needed the flower of life to live, only to enable some of the abilities her invid heritage gave her, and the food tasted wonderful.

Horizon drop ships landed nearby, each one opened and a variety of human mecha stepped out, followed by more of the andalite warriors. She watched as human mecha known as Gladiators, and the smaller ones known as cyclones began constructing barriers and defensive positions. It all culminated when four human mecha she recognized as destroid Monsters moved into positions and began firing at far off targets.

The human way of waging war was indeed very different from the invid. Judging by the expressions on the andalite faces, it was very different from their way as well. Many of them seemed to run away holding their ears. She laughed at that.

"What's so funny?" asked Lancer, the human she had fallen in love with.

"Oh nothing... look those assault ships are moving out, should we follow them?" She asked.

Sera noted that another human had joined the conversation, a man named Scott Bernard. "Yeah, that's our assignment, support the andalite gunships as they attack the yeerk lines, we get to be the guys who take out yeerk anti-air batteries."

"Doesn't sound too hard." Rook replied.

Sera walked her battloid after the commander's beta fighter, they were walking on the ground instead of flying in the air. Lancer had explained it as a form of psychological warfare, and asked her how she thought the humans must have felt when she attacked them in a massive clawed trooper shell. Sera didn't like to think of things like that, once she essentially became a human she had begun to wonder about the righteousness of the invid attack on Earth, the more she thought about it, the more wrong she realized her people had been.

She put those thoughts behind her and continued towards the battle line, all the while wondering what the yeerk's motivation for attacking another race was. For the invid it had been a matter of survival.

Those thoughts were cut short as she spotted several groups of andalites exchanging fire with another group of soldiers a short distance away through the scrub.

Without thinking, she leapt her battloid over the andalite lines and landed in front of the yeerks, raining short range missiles down on them as she landed. Apparently Lancer had a point about psychological warfare, as the remaining troops broke and ran before her. She decided to let them go, after all, those soldiers were being controlled by a slug in their heads, not by themselves, besides that, those slugs would probably spread tales of terror among their fellows.

She looked up at the andalite assault ships flying overhead. Several red flashes traced up at them. Those must have been the guns Scott had mentioned. She took to the air, with Lancer not far behind her. They didn't get the chance to attack those positions, as they were almost immediately set upon by yeerk fighters. She dispatched one with several bursts from her main plasma gun, their shields made them tougher than a human made alpha, but they were far less maneuverable and easier to hit. Lancer took out a second one with the heavy guns that made the beta such a successful invid killer.

Sera hit her boosters and took off to intercept the third. Its shields were already down courtesy of the two alphas armed with destabilizers. The royal command battloid was designed with highly advanced Robotech armor similar to that found on an alpha fighter, yeerk ships were designed to rely mainly on their shields. Her mecha's claws and forearms were even tougher, and they ripped through the yeerk craft like it was made of paper.

"I hope that wasn't the best the yeerks have!" Rand yelled enthusiastically over the radio.

Sera shook her head and replied, "I wouldn't say such things, you might get what you ask for."

As if on cue a force of yeerk gunships and attack fighters appeared on approach to their position, the shapes of charging hork bajir below them. Sera smirked, "I told you so."

"Alright team, lets show them why you shouldn't try to enslave other people," Scott said over the radio. "Present company forgiven."

Sera winced at the remark, but flew on to meet the attacking yeerks.

**Planet Leera, fire base zebra**

Calypso was excited, this was her first battle, and she was determined to be worthy of the title warrior. She gripped the military grade shredder tightly and followed the warriors down the ramp of the human vessel. Once outside she noticed the massive human machines moving about. She would have thought them lumbering vehicles of destruction, but the way they nimbly stepped around obstructions and handled equipment quickly put an end to that idea. She was serving with a fairly young prince, recently promoted, named Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, the great war prince Elfangor's little brother. His fighter had been damaged in the first battle with the yeerks, and so he was stuck leading a group of warriors on the ground.

The group she was assigned to consisted of her, Nactif, three other warriors and Prince Aximili. There were no spare vehicles or fighters so they armed themselves with shredders and raced towards the front lines by hoof.

The andalite leaders knew the yeerks would make a push soon, and with the disappearance of the assault ship _Ascalin_ under mysterious circumstances as it entered the system, they knew they couldn't hold either. The arrival of the humans was unexpected and from what she had seen, war prince Galuit seemed to discount them.

As her group ran through the leeran terrain, they saw a group of armored humans moving with them, leaping and bounding across the terrain at the same rate as they were running.

The humans made their way closer to her squad, and continued with them all the way to the front lines. They could already see andalite and human war machines clashing with yeerk gunships and fighters.

Calypso took up a position behind the cover of a rock. Leerans and fellow andalites already held positions along a line across a particularly smooth path through the center of the continent.

One of the humans yelled out, "Friendly artillery incoming! Take cover!"

Calypso's translator didn't know the meaning of the word artillery, so she and the rest of the andalites looked around in confusion. She noticed the leerans, their psychic abilities apparently had given them insight on what the human had said were pressing themselves flat against the ground. She didn't know what was going on, but she knelt down behind her cover just in case.

Calypso's entire world exploded around her. A sound so loud she wondered whether she would hear anything afterwards shook the battlefield, some of the andalites that were still standing fell over. The leerans seemed to be muttering some prayer, the humans appeared unfazed. Bits of debris rained down all over the friendly lines. After what felt like an eternity the roaring sound of explosions lessened, and she took a peak from around her rock.

The aerial battle still raged in the skies, but the yeerk lines, formerly scrub and rock outcroppings, were now a field of craters obscured by a heavy dust that would render shredders and dracon beams useless. To her disgust she could see body parts of former hork bajir controllers scattered across the battlefield. Most of the andalites and leerans were still recovering, the humans though were up and with weapons aimed.

"Push forward!" One of them yelled.

As one the humans rose up, and yelling at the top of their lungs charged the several hundred yards towards where the yeerk lines used to be. Even from behind them, Calypso nearly gave into instinctual fear and ran. Somehow though she found herself running after them, swept up in the moment. She looked around, Nactif and Prince Aximili were up and following her. "_What are you doing!?_" the latter shouted.

"_I don't know,_" She replied.

The three of them were joined by a mere handful of other andalite warriors. They followed the human advance. Cutting down any hork bajir the humans missed in their wild charge. The hork bajir survivors, finding their dracon beams useless tried to resort to hand to hand combat.

A hork bajir is a deadly and dangerous opponent, no match to a trained andalite warrior, not really, but still capable of causing damage, especially in great numbers. The humans, wearing their cyclone power armor, made them look like defenseless newborns. Pretty soon, they were out of the cratered blasted landscape, hundreds of hork bajir were fleeing from a group of a few dozen humans and andalite warriors.

A few tried to make a stand, in the now clear atmosphere their dracon beams worked, they downed three of the humans before a swarm of chemically propelled explosives tore them apart. The humans stopped their headlong charge and took up positions again. Gunning down fleeing hork bajir as they ran.

She stopped and took aim, she missed her target and burned a hole in a rock next to the controller. A human quickly turned to shoot and burned several holes in the yeerk's back.

"Take a breather, then we push ahead again, can't let them regroup." Another human ordered his squad.

Calypso took a moment to relax and catch her breath. The human way of warfare was definitely exhilarating.


End file.
